The present invention relates to a portable storage medium processing system, for example, a portable storag medium processing system for personalizing a portable storage medium such as an IC card.
In general, a card with a magnetic stripe, a so-called magnetic card, used as an identification card or a credit card can only store a small volume of data and has poor security since its storage content can be easily read.
Recently, as a portable storage medium, a so-called IC card has been developed which has a large storage capacity, and it can prevent unauthorized access of its storage content. An IC card of this type is delivered from a card manufacturer to a card issuer in an unissued state and is personalized after predetermined data is written therein by the card issuer. Then, the IC card is given to a user.
The conventional IC card is issued in the same manner as that of the conventional magnetic card. More specifically, data recorded in common with respect to all of the card and data different for each card holder are written in advance in a magnetic tape or a floppy disk. These data are read out and the readout data are input to a card reader/writer through a host computer without modification. The input data is written in an unissued IC card by the card reader/writer.
However, in the conventional processing method, data to be written in the IC card may often be disclosed to a third party and therefore the processing system has low security.